What We Do

The D. E. Shaw group is trusted by investors across the world to manage their assets by seeking the optimal balance of risk and reward. While we’re known as a pioneer in quantitative investing, we also have considerable expertise in areas that involve fundamental analysis or portfolio manager discretion. We use a combination of quantitative and qualitative tools to uncover independent, hard-to-find sources of return across global public and private markets.

3.1

Investment Approach

Within the D. E. Shaw group, we run on collaboration, not internal competition. Teams work together to share trade ideas, identify and address risks, build
tools, and explore new opportunities. Our staff includes world-class mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, economists, analysts, business-builders, and system architects relying on specialized trading,
operational, and compliance expertise developed over nearly 30 years.

3.1.1

Assets Under Management

As of October 1, 2018, the D. E. Shaw group had more than $53 billion in investment and committed capital. Our investment activities fall into two broad categories:

$29bn

Return

Our alternative investment capabilities date back to 1989 and consist of both larger, multi-strategy investment vehicles and
more focused, strategy-specific investment products. These strategies focus on the delivery of absolute returns, with low targeted correlation to traditional assets like equities.
Together, they account for more than $29 billion of the firm's investment and committed capital.

Alternative Investments

$24bn

Return

Long-oriented strategies focusing on major, tradeable asset classes represent more than $24 billion of the firm's investment
capital. Launched in 2000, a
suite of strategies allows institutional investors to customize their exposures to particular equity indices. A discretionary strategy launched in 2013 aims to offer
exposure to several global asset classes, alongside other select alpha opportunities.

Long-Oriented Investments

3.1.2

Strategies

Our systematic strategies run on quantitative and computational techniques developed by the firm over approximately 30 years of research and trading. We believe a strong culture of rigorous analysis and scientific research, supported by a robust infrastructure, is the bedrock of a successful quantitative investment process. We aim to identify statistically robust market inefficiencies through hypothesis formulation, testing, and validation based on practical knowledge of markets and advanced computational methods.

We also devote a large share of our attention to discretionary investment activities based on the identification of potentially profitable opportunities by experienced staff. These strategies rely primarily on human analysis to discover, and capture, pricing inefficiencies across a broad array of asset classes spanning public and private markets. Our discretionary investment groups benefit from a highly rigorous and process-driven investment approach that is generally focused on attempting to isolate idiosyncratic profit opportunities while maintaining a low correlation to broader markets and macroeconomic variables. We believe our collaborative investment approach allows us to optimally deploy the deep domain expertise of our investment teams, adapting and reacting to ever-evolving market conditions.

Several of the strategies deployed by the firm seek to identify investment opportunities through a hybrid approach that combines aspects of our systematic and discretionary strategies. For example, an initial quantitative idea or "forecast" may be unaware of an unusual market event that is known to our analysts, or a fundamental view might be best vetted through the use of quantitative tools.

We apply the same analytically rigorous approach to investing across a number of systematic, discretionary, and hybrid strategies.

Engages in trading of systematic forecasts generally based on technical inputs or on macroeconomic data; instruments traded relate to equity indices, government bonds and interest rates, currencies, and commodities.

Involves equity and debt investments at various stages of the corporate life cycle and across the capital structure, including less-liquid opportunities in credit and related markets in the U.S. and Europe.

Invests in, develops, and operates over two dozen solar and wind projects in the U.S., including the nation's first offshore wind farm.

3.1.3

Technology

We use sophisticated technology to run our investment activities, with more than 250 talented developers and engineers pushing its potential. When platforms
don’t meet our standards, we build our own.

The entrepreneurial spirit has always been a part of our firm’s culture. (We even created one of the world’s first free email service providers.)

In 2015, we formed Arcesium LLC to make part of our capabilities
available to other asset managers.
Arcesium is now an independently operated company that provides post-trade technology and services to financial clients, while continuing to support the D. E. Shaw group and its funds.

3.2

Managing Risk

Some outsiders might say we have an obsession with risk management, and we’d have to agree.
We believe a key difference between firms that survive and thrive over the long run and those that don’t is risk management.
A guiding principle in our approach is that risk and portfolio management are not separated: every one of us is a risk manager.
We’re guided by our Risk Committee, which evaluates risk and manages the allocation of capital among strategies.

Spotlight: Renewables

Since 2005, we've invested in over two dozen solar and wind projects, including the country's first offshore wind farm. But we're more than just an investor. D. E. Shaw Renewable Investments (DESRI) has built three industry-leading renewable energy companies and has a long track record of acquiring and developing solar and wind projects.

We’re proud to be on the leading edge of renewable energy investing and development in the U.S.

Industry Leadership

Over the years, the D. E. Shaw group has been nominated for dozens of industry awards by Absolute Return, Alternative Investment News, Derivatives Week, and HFMWeek, among others. We’ve also received some of the alternative asset management industry’s highest awards in recent years from Institutional Investor.

2016

Institutional Hedge Fund Manager of the Year

2015

Multistrategy Hedge Fund Manager of the Year

2013

Lifetime Achievement Award, Dr. David E. Shaw

2013

Institutional Hedge Fund Manager of the Year

We also take an active role in regulatory and trade group committees, to continue to promote best practices and weigh in on key policy issues.